1 El-Ghannam

Abdalla El-Ghannam
Professor Rebecca Agosta
UWRT 1101-035
9 October 2015
My Journey to Literacy
I can still remember the sound of that old music in my
head. Those endless hours that I spent playing the educational CD
called Reader Rabbit. I still can remember the excitement I had when
the rabbit walked around collecting letters to form a word or a verb to
correct a structure of a sentence. I had to be fast as the challenge was
always against time. My mother would help me sometimes and I never
wanted get away from the computer. It is amazing how the program
was designed in such an attractive way. But how did I get my hands on
that CD? Well one of the family friends was at the US in the early 2000s
and she brought it all the way home at Egypt; I can now imagine how
hard the access to electronic literacy is at that time. It felt like I have
something precious and unique that rarely anyone had it at this time.

As I grew older, I remember my private teacher at home every

other day, tracking my progress in reading and my pronunciation .We
would repeat the words thousands of times and he never got bored. We
practiced reading short stories. Back then I wanted to feel like the

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older people reading big books of hundreds of pages; holding such big
books and reading out loud, and I did after practicing for a long time.
I went to kindergarten two times, because I was somehow late in
applying for elementary school. I would have been 1 academic year
behind than all other kids in my age except for my mothers efforts in
summer. She got me the books for elementary year 1 and we studied
in the summer. I remember that very conversation when I said: Mom,
why are we studying in summer? Didnt I finish my exams? I dont want
to solve any more drills. She replied: well honey, if you solve this
book in summer Ill get you your own computer. Dont look at it as a
whole book. You can solve 3 drills every day. I got encouraged by her
words and I did. I got my placement test and I passed my first
elementary test by studying at home. I felt that I have achieved
something, I was really happy, I was victorious. The computer I got was
my gate to a lot of technical words that would not be easily known as
normal vocab taught at schools Computers were in English as it is not
my native.
6th grade was a hard year as the exam covered both terms, so we
had to study the content of the whole year in order to be ready and we
got open ended questions, so at the beginning of the year one of my
teachers grabbed me and my friend and told us: Do you want to
improve your writing for the exams? Well I have the solution to write
very descriptively, Ill get you attached to the broadcast in each

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morning but you have to come and discuss the writing tasks I give you
before you say it in the morning broadcast do you both agree to work
together ? Of course we agreed and I was really excited because I was
doing something new and I knew I would enjoy working with my friend
and nervous at the same time as I will have to represent it in front of
the whole school I had those doubts what if it is bad? What if no one
understands me? I had those doubts and questions in my head: Would I
stand in front of the whole school and read a piece of paper I prepared?
So for the rest of the year I and my friend would search in different
fields and subjects such as local events, sports, science. We would
explain to each other what we found and developed a good entry for
our weekly task, and then we would go through a friendly debate with
our teacher before broadcasting on Tuesdays. It was scary. But after all
it was not that bad. Its hilarious how my peers used to argue with me
about the material I say which made me do my research more
perfectly so I can win every time . During the year my ability to
compose a paragraph and read it representatively had increased and I
started noticing better grades in my experimental tests and eventually
got a good grade in my finals.
In the summers, I used to stay with my cousins who were around
my age. Once I told their father, who was a writer in the field of law,
about my broadcasting activity, he told us that every day we will write
in a popular topic to boost our writing skills every day. For the whole

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summer we wrote an essay every day and debated about the topic and
then we all join together to write another essay with all of our ideas
gathered and showed it to their father to evaluate our genre. We used
to write about biographies of famous people, shows in the TV and
describing a particular object or event in our daily life. My style was
always philosophical about how I see things.
I joined a charity group when I was 15. I think that was in the 9th
grade and the school administration was the sponsor of the charity
group. When the group leader said he/she need volunteers to handle
the paper work of the group: somehow I said: Me! without even
thinking of what I am going to do. Afterwards I was responsible for
sending requests to the administrator asking for supplies and
permissions to use some of the school facilities, and I worked on my
summarization very hard and very efficiently and I had to put the
important points first then the less important ones , in short I learned
how to organize paper work. For example I was responsible for sending
a list of our needs, writing permissions to use some areas inside the
school and organizing for an event on a weekend by summering the
plan of the day. I was doing my job quit well and enjoying my position
in the group when I suddenly decided to change this job. I chose to
write reports for every trip we go to I was like the documenter for the
activities occurring in the group. Going to the field to the poor areas
where we helped the people there and tried to solve their problems

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and even build them houses. Inspired by the environment around me I
chose my words that described this place, the people, and deliver their
lifestyle on paper. It felt like I was transferring the picture to the people
that couldnt go there and see it for themselves and to people who
wants to make a difference and leave a trace in poor peoples life. My
role was to give translate the case on paper, so it can spread fast to
more people in order to get enough help for the sake of containment of
these people.
Senior year of high school was the most difficult year in my life. If
you want to be successful you have to study for 9 months nonstop, no
breaks. In order to succeed you have to memorize everything, literally.
You just have to memorize, memorize, and memorize. I wrote a lot in
that year. I had to write every possible note I could think of, every
detail said. In the exams you communicate with the evaluator who
marks your paper, you dont expect them to know the subject you are
talking about, they just compare your answers to model answer sheet.
To do well, simplifying was the key to success. The process of
transforming complex information into simpler ideas had be fast and
accurate, by following the rule: practice makes perfect. Quitting was
not an option in that time, if you dont get a good grade youre
nothing. In the end I got a 96.3%, I was happy with that grade and felt
that my work has paid off until the universitys orientation in Egypt
which was a disappointment for me.

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Somedays after finishing high school at Egypt, I arrived at
Charlotte. It was a huge leap in literacy development. It was a different
society, culture and a total new way of communicating with people.
Putting my English to work was the hardest for me to do as I never had
much practice while learning English. Proceeding on to join UNCC I had
to take the TOEFL exam (Test of English as a Foreign Language). When
I looked at the book to study for the exam, I barely knew any of the
words that were written in there. All those words I have to learn and
use in the test which included speaking, reading, writing, and listening.
I had to talk to all people I knew in English in order to train my brain on
translating faster and not to stop between words to think of the next
word. The ability to speak was developed electronically where I had to
listen to 2 people talking to each other either about a lecture or about
a situation in their daily. Question were asked about the content of the
conversation and then I would record myself speaking in response to
these questions related to their conversation. In the reading section I
had to read complete lecures on different subjects and the purpose
was to develop reading skills but I really focused on the content as it
was really interesting. The readings were about different branches in
science, geography, history, psychology, and cultures. Google translate
helped me a lot in the particular part.
Since I arrived, every day Im learning something new and
getting used to the peoples habits and how they approach certain

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stuff in their normal life. Nevertheless I still take my time when reading
new subjects to make sure I fully understand what is being said. Mixing
the two cultures is something I never experienced before and at the
same time Im enjoying it. Joining the UWRT class is opening new
windows to develop my literacy the way I didnt think it would. This
narrative is not complete because my literacy development isnt. If had
the chance to write about my literacy development in five years from
now I would definitely would do it, as I enjoyed writing it.